7/15/2011 @ 7:30AM

China's High-Speed Rail Hiccups

Anything you can build, China can build better. That was one of the underlying messages behind China’s high-speed rail network. It was intended to showcase the country’s newly developed prowess in building high-tech projects on a grander scale than even Japan could achieve. But three breakdowns in four days have sent that notion skidding off the rails.

One of the southbound trains came to a halt last Sunday night, only ten days after the much-vaunted project made its debut on June 30, one day before the Communist Party’s 90th anniversary.

Wang Yongping, spokesperson for the Ministry of Railway said on Thursday the incident was caused by a power cut triggered by thunderstorms. Passengers on the train experienced a blackout for more than two hours. Another 19 trains were delayed.

Only 39 hours after the first breakdown, another fault hit the high-speed rail service on Tuesday morning when another power failure in the Suzhou area disrupted dozens of trains.

The third malfunction came the following day, when hundreds of passengers on a train heading for Beijing were asked to change train in the middle of their journey due a problem with tractive transformers on the train.

Completed in just 38 months, nearly 18 months ahead of schedule, the high-speed rail cuts travel time between Chinas two major economic circles–Bohai Economic Rim and Yangtze River Delta–in half to five hours.

Viewed as a gift in honor of the Communist Partys 90th anniversary, the early completion was announced in January by former Minister of Railway Liu Zhijun, who was later arrested for corruption in February.

The 1,318-kilometer railway linking Chinas capital and financial center had been designed to handle a service speed of 380 kilometers per hour. But the speed was reduced to 300 kilometers per hour after Lius dismissal over concerns about safety and excessive costs cutting.

Having the worlds fastest trains running on the worlds longest high-speed rail line is seen by Chinese authorities as a strong gesture to demonstrate their ability to upgrade Chinas modernization and integration into the world economy.

In comparison to Japans Shinkansen bullet train, Wang, the Railway Ministry’s spokesman, said the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway technologies are far superior. They cant even be raised in the same breath, Wang said.

We Chinese would never claim that technologies owned by others are ours. Nor will we ever relinquish our right to file patent applications for innovations developed through our own knowledge and efforts just because of the irresponsible remarks of others.

The quick succession of malfunctions has sparked online discussion of safety issues for the project that required more than 217 billion yuan ($33.6 billion) of state investment.

Passengers have been posting message on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, to spread the news about the breakdowns as they occurred. Others chimed in to complain that the government had bragged too much but did too little after the problems were revealed.

They should really ask themselves what were the causes instead of blaming others being too harsh. They are typical bureaucrats, said one post.

The Ministry of Railway finally apologized on Thursday in an online chat hosted by the People’s Daily, denying any major safety risk had resulted from the malfunctions.

The investigation against Liu, the former chief of the high-speed railway project, fueled worries corruption had affected the project’s construction.

In March, China’s National Audit Office released a report tracking the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail construction in 2010. The audit found seven major wrongdoings including unregulated bidding, illegal transfers and diverting construction funds, and using false, counterfeit or forged invoices that involved up to five billion yuan ($774 million).

In 2009, a total of 14 workers were killed in several accidents during the construction of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, and ten were injured.

China’s ultimate goal is to build a 16,000-kilometer high-speed rail network by 2020 to link all major Chinese cities.